Thursday, September 18, 2008

And still there is more

My son is just a total crack up - he makes me laugh all the time, in part because he has inherited my love for the crazy, the immautre and the just plain silly!!

It was off to the audiologists again today to see how he is going with the new Freedom processor. Seeing as though he blitzed the sentence level test last time his audie told him he had to make it harder, just because he could : - )

So this time it was single words only, so there are no other words like in a sentence where you can help guess the word or the meaning by hearing all the rest of the information - just a word on its own. The words are on a pre-recorded CD and have been made with much time and care so that each word has the same volume across the entirety of the word and each word is at the same volume as the last.

So in quiet he scores 90 something percent about 93 I think it was.

But the best was yet to come, he turns in his seat looks at the audie and says "you know I'm not that sure about this CD you know?"

The poor audie knows he is about to commit mental hari kari but goes for it anyway and asks A to explain.

"....well you know...it is kind of like when the person says it they say the word all at the one level. That is not what it is like when people talk in real life is it? When people talk there are like accents on certain consonants and stuff when they say the word. When she says them on the CD there isn't any of that? Why is that? Why didn't they make it right so it is like listening to normal speech then?"

The audiologist had the very briefest glint of a passing "deer in the headlights look" then grins wildly at A and says "for goodness sake you are profoundly deaf you are not supposed to even know about accents on consonants, let alone hear them"....at which point they both just cracked up laughing!

I am actually really impressed with his audiologist, we have only just started seeing him as his other one retired. He treats him like the young man he is and empowers him to be involved in his hearing management. He talked at length with A today about using his FM and how kids at his age sometimes reject them. He made the comparison between a friend who kept making up reasons why he needed a new car, when in fact he just wanted to buy a new car. The audie put that right back on A, if you decide not to wear it then don't kid yourself or anyone else that it is because you can hear better, because that is not the case. If you are too lazy to wear it or embarassed to wear it then be up front and say it, don't pretend it is because you can hear fine without your FM.

I think that message plus the test results were just what boy wonder needed to hear, and that he will make the right choices with regard to his FM.